Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center
University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa

Founded in 1980, the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Iowa received its NCI designation in 2000 and Comprehensive designation in 2001. The Center is dedicated to bringing the finest cancer care and research to Iowa and beyond. Holden ensures that all the cancer research, clinical service, and education at Iowa are interdependent.

Holden is a matrix center that spans the university and includes physicians, faculty, and researchers from 40 university departments and six colleges, as well as the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Research at Holden is organized into six research programs: cancer immunology and immunotherapy, cancer signaling and experimental therapeutics, free radical cancer biology, tumor imaging, cancer epidemiology, and cancer genomics and cell growth. The Holden Cancer Research Laboratories allow the Center to locate and integrate many researchers in close proximity to each other. The Center promotes interactive cancer research, provides health care related to the prevention, detection, and treatment of cancer, and educates cancer professionals and the citizens of Iowa about cancer.

Holden is also organized around specific cancer types through its Multidisciplinary Oncology Groups which include a dozen multidisciplinary teams that are involved in both clinical care and research. The Center enrolls many patients in its active program of early phase clinical trials and also supports clinical and translational research done in collaboration with other cancer centers through efforts including the Iowa/Mayo Lymphoma SPORE, the National Clinical Trials Network and the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium.

Additional research is taking place through the efforts of multidisciplinary teams involved in cancer prevention, cancer and obesity, stem cell transplantation and molecular oncology. Holden has an active molecular oncology program that includes a Molecular Tumor Board and a Molecular Pathology team that is CLIA certified and CAP accredited and conducts multigene cancer hotspot mutation testing with next generation sequencing.

The Center supports 11 shared research resources that provide support to cancer investigators exploring molecular and cellular aspects of cancer, clinical trials and population studies. Holden has established prospective registries linked to biospecimens for select cancer types know as the Molecular Epidemiology Resources Over 4000 subjects have been enrolled in these registries.

Outreach to the people of Iowa is an important component of the Center’s activities. Holden provides information about cancer to patients, their families, and health professionals. It has a leadership role in the Iowa Cancer Consortium, a statewide cancer control partnership.

* This profile was provided by the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center.